Pages

August 07, 2015

07/08/2015: China takes action to modernise agriculture

On Friday, the Chinese central government
released a guideline to make agriculture more intensive and environmental
friendly, in their quest to secure an adequate and safe food supply.

The guideline was issued by the State
Council and seeks to transform production by dissuading dependency on
resources and mass labour, as well as improving the use of advanced
technology and skills of farmers.

The government aspires to achieve a
visual improvement to modern agriculture by 2020 and strong progress by 2030.

The farming boom in China has lasted for
more than three decades, with output constantly rising.The nation takes pride in the fact that
they feed more than a fifth of the world’s population on only 10 percent of
the world’s arable land.

However, over-exploitation and primitive
farming have burdened farmland. For example, in a major grain area in
northeast China, crops are suffering from falling fertility due to the
reduction of layers of black soil land from 100 centimetres to 20
centimetres.

"Agriculture faces increasing
challenges and risks and it is an urgent need to transform the production
model," said Ye Xingqing, head of the agricultural economy department of
the Development Research Centre under the State Council.

The new guideline has vowed to find new,
creative approach to industrial chains, subsidise modern farms, make loans
obtainable to agricultural businesses and educate farmers to take advantage
of technology.

For a sustainable sector, the country
will stop increasing their use of fertilisers and pesticides by 2020 to
reduce soil pollution and promote the consumption of organic food, and pilot
cyclic utilisation of agricultural waste.

These measures are expected to upgrade
the agriculture, turning it into a sector, which can be sustained and will
keep its high yield simultaneously as to satisfy the exponential food demand
from an enormous population.

It has been forecast that the Chinese
will consume 50 billion kilograms more food in 2020 than it did in 2010.